This Vegan Hollandaise Sauce Will Make Your Meat-Eating Friends Jealous

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This article originally appeared on ExtraCrispy.com.

Finding a good vegan egg substitute is hard enough, but making a good vegan hollandaise sauce has been something of a quixotic quest—until now. Though making a plant-based hollandaise sauce certainly wasn’t easy, explains Candice Hutchings of The Edgy Veg. “Perfecting a hollandaise worthy of the name took a few years. My husband James is a Benedict connoisseur and unless the sauce was near-perfect, he was not about to entertain the idea of calling it a hollandaise,” she says.

The trick to making a vegan hollandaise sauce with the same texture and a similar flavor profile to one made with eggs and butter was the addition of black salt, which is known for its pungent odor. “The black salt is what provides this sauce with that signature egg-sulphur flavor and smell,” Hutchings says.

Her new cookbook, The Edgy Veg: 138 Carnivore-Approved Vegan Recipes, co-authored with her husband, is full of smart, plant-based takes on popular recipes like eggs Benedict. “Many vegans try to re-invent the wheel, when really creating a delicious dish can be created using similar cooking techniques and the same flavor profile through spices and sauces,” Hutchings explains. “I am not trying to replace the real thing. I just want people to know that they do have other options that have similar flavor profiles and are just as satisfying.”

Hutchings notes that you don't have to make this recipe from scratch every time you're craving a hit of hollandaise. "The hollandaise sauce will keep for 5 days in the fridge and for 1 month in the freezer," she writes. "It can easily be reheated on days that you’re feeling extra lazy. To reheat, whisk in a small saucepan over low heat for about 5 minutes, until heated through."

So make a batch of vegan hollandaise sauce, and put it on everything from your tofu scrambles to crispy hash browns.

Ritzy Hollandaise Sauce

Yields: 1½ cup

Ingredients

½ cup unsweetened almond milk

½ cup soft silken tofu

½ teaspoon black salt or sea salt

2 tablespoons nutritional yeast

¼ teaspoon dry mustard powder

¼ teaspoon ground turmeric

1 ½ tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice

¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper

¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

⅓ cup vegan butter, melted

Directions

In a blender, combine almond milk, tofu, black salt, nutritional yeast, mustard powder and turmeric. Blend on high until smooth. Add lemon juice and blend until smooth. Add cayenne and pepper; pulse until well combined.

Remove the plug in the lid. While the blender is running, slowly add vegan butter through the hole in the lid and blend until smooth. Check the taste and consistency of hollandaise and adjust salt, pepper and lemon juice, if necessary.